


where one is already always known

by JudeAraya



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Communication, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Magical Realism, and maybe too romantic, come at me bro, jude experiments with new genre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:08:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23789089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JudeAraya/pseuds/JudeAraya
Summary: under each layer, they’re already there.“Phil wouldn’t ever say magic, but if pressed, he’d guess  that their hearts were meant to be this way, inverse, working to know each other in opposite ways.”
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 10
Kudos: 48





	where one is already always known

**Author's Note:**

  * For [det395](https://archiveofourown.org/users/det395/gifts).



> A birthday gift to my lovely friend [Jen](https://det395.tumblr.com/),  
> Inspired by [My Heart is Layers of Scar](http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=1073) pannel by A Softer World. 
> 
> I tried to write you a little magical realism which is new so we'll consider this an experiment.

_at first_

“How’d you get this?” Dan asked. He ran a fingertip down the small scar on Phil’s thigh, just above his knee. 

“I reckon I fell or bumped into something,” Phil said. Down to nothing but his pants, hair a mess, he wasn’t paying much attention to anything but how _close_ to his cock Dan’s mouth was.

They hadn’t done that yet. They’d only had sex a couple of times really, but this was the first time they’d taken so long with it, with the build up and the tease and the care. Dan had been slowly peeling Phil out of his clothes, kissing his skin so carefully. Cataloging Phil’s body, taking note of the points of his elbows and curve of each rib, inhaling every time Phil did. Phil had told Dan the day before, for the first time, that he loved him. He’d written it in the snow, wishing there were a way to write it in Dan’s heart. They’d gone to bed with the words caught between rushed lips, tangled in a very large, urgent need for closeness between two young, eager bodies.

Phil didn’t want to bring other lovers into bed now, but at this very moment, he couldn’t help it. 

See, Phil hadn’t ever had a lover before. He kind of wanted to cringe from the word, but it was the truth. He’d never had someone take him apart like this, someone who wanted to linger over the span of his belly and kiss right above his heart, who would whisper something so intimate into damp skin even Phil couldn’t hear it. 

He didn’t hear it but somehow...he _knew_ it. The words pushed and pulled and rang through his body; the grateful _thank you_ , the release of a longing that was Dan’s need, Dan’s loneliness, Dan’s desire. 

Dan kissed his knee, and then the inside of his thigh. 

“You sure you don’t remember?” he asked, kissing and then biting a scar so faint Phil had forgotten about it. 

Until Dan asked, until Dan’s lips pulled the truth right from him. 

_Oh,_ Phil thought. 

“Oh,” Dan said, so small and a little hurting as if struck by the memory just as Phil was. “I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t—” Phil gasped around the memory, of making a fool of himself, of falling for a boy who couldn’t ever love him back. Of being seventeen and lanky and weird and out of place and trying so hard to act like none of those were true. Of tripping, cutting his leg, of everyone, _everyone_ laughing at him. Of that boy, who Phil had thought so special, laughing the hardest. “It’s stupid, it’s not a big deal.” 

Dan crawled up Phil’s body then, eyes wide, pink bitten lip a bit swollen. “But it hurt when he laughed at you, didn’t it?” He put the palm of his hand flat on Phil’s chest, as if he could take a little of that pain into himself. “It doesn’t matter if it was a long time ago, or if, like, objectively it wasn’t a big deal.” 

Phil closed his eyes and arched into the touch a bit. Maybe he shouldn’t want to, shouldn’t let it happen. Dan’s beautiful, big heart was so open to him. So ready to take on a little of Phil’s pain. So he did.

“ _Oh,_ ” Dan said, so softly Phil barely caught it. Dan took a shuddering breath and swallowed so loudly it clicked in his throat. He stilled, and looked into Phil’s eyes for a breathless pause. Dan didn’t move his hand, not until he exhaled again, then kissed the corners of Phil’s closed eyes. “There, then. That’s better isn’t it?” 

Phil caught Dan by the back of the neck and pulled him into a messy kiss, one that only became hungrier and more uncoordinated as their bodies connected, as they let themselves tumble into the inevitability of their desire. 

After, maybe, in the half light of dusk, Phil might think, ‘that was odd’. He might, but he didn’t. Because next to him, drowsing and sweat smelling, was a miracle of a boy, one who filled Phil’s field of vision so completely there wasn’t room for anything more. 

* * *

_and then_

Phil almost asked about it a hundred times those first few months. _How can you take my pain?_ wasn’t a usual sort of question. Not even for Phil, whose usual tended toward the unusual anyway. 

The thing was, it wasn’t a metaphor, or hyperbole or even Phil buying into what Dan might call an overly-romanticized idea of soul mates. It was _literal_ , it was embodied, it was Dan lifting the burden and ache of even the oldest pains. Sometimes, but not always, Dan would touch him and it would go somewhere deep and sacred and private. The core of Phil, wrapped in layers of hurt, of slights, of self-doubt, of self-hatred. Old pains, things that had shaped Phil. Scars as real as the one on his leg Dan had kissed, years ago, a spark that lit something brilliant and unmanageable and perfect that was only theirs.

Phil almost asked Dan about it hundreds of times over the years. _What is this thing we do?_

But he didn’t because Dan didn’t. It was a secret, one stolen from the world. Dan never asked him either, about the thing Phil could do. How it worked. Why it was different. Perhaps for the best, because Phil didn’t know either. He thought, often, of his grandmother, and wondered if the gift she had could be passed in different forms, her to him and he to Dan.

Phil wouldn’t ever say magic, but if pressed, he’d guess that their hearts were meant to be this way, inverse, working to know each other in opposite ways. 

Well, not hearts, not really. Something without words he could see. Something indescribably, intangibly but utterly _real_. Phil saw it nestled in Dan’s chest, where he always felt the first punch of strong emotion, where Dan felt things so very strongly it almost bowled Phil over at times. When they fought, when he was scared, the only place he could fill Dan with love when words weren't enough to get through. 

Sometimes Dan’s hand would rest there, at the center of Phil’s chest and he knew, he _knew_ Dan saw something there too. 

Phil’s heart was as untameable as their relationship. A thing no words could capture. Phil’s heart could never be changed, which was right. Dan wouldn’t change him, but what he did was ease the bearing of past pain, halving it by taking it in, shouldering it with him. When they were together, so often, they stumbled into moments, into inexplicable connection, intimacy so strong it hurt. 

It was in the brush of a pinky late at night when they were drowsing in sleep and afterglow. 

It was in the afternoon, Dan holding him and telling Phil it would be okay and just to breathe, and to breathe with him until the anxiety passed. 

It was at dinner, Phil’s smile so brilliant when Dan tried and failed to make his favorite meal as a birthday gift. 

In hundreds of moments, hundreds of times, for reasons neither could ever name. Even in joy, Dan was able to take some of what had hurt Phil once, and ease the weight of it by increments.

* * *

_but more, perhaps_

“Dan,” Phil whispered, unsure if Dan might be asleep. He was curled with his back to the door on top of the duvet. Phil shivered, goose-prickled skin needing Dan’s warmth, always. He never liked fighting with Dan, but rarely they did argue like this, cutting and bitter and raw.

Dan didn’t respond, but Phil knew the shape of his sigh, felt the exhalation of too much emotion expand in his own lungs on an inhale. 

“Oh, Dan,” Phil said, climbing onto the bed. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” 

“Don’t be,” Dan’s voice was thick and slow. “I was a twat, talking to you like that.” 

“It’s a lot. We’re going through a lot.” Phil excused. It had hurt, Dan’s anger aimed at him, sharp edges exposed and Phil too close not to be cut by them. 

“You’re mad though,” Dan said. “I hurt you. I felt it. So why are you here?” 

Phil pressed his forehead against the back of Dan’s neck, winding an arm around his waist. It was still chilly in the room, but Dan’s body was just what Phil needed. Phil could only hope that his body was what Dan needed. 

“Because you were hurting. And I could feel it too, as soon as you slammed the door.” Phil said quietly. Dan’s body startled, the smallest jerk and shiver, and then they both held their breath. “I’ve never—I’ve never understood exactly what it was like for you. I thought...I mostly thought it was okay, but I did sometimes worry that it hurt you.” 

“What did?” 

“Taking my pain. Sharing it, I mean,” Phil said. Dan froze. Phil knew, then, that they _should_ have spoken of this sooner. Dan’s shock, the quicksilver cold and sliver of fear and the bitter taste of Dan’s unease slipping under Phil’s skin and redolent on his tongue, was very, very real. Phil had been so _sure_ that Dan understood that he wasn’t alone. 

Dan rolled over, eyes swollen from crying, fingers cold when he cupped Phil’s face. 

“You weren’t hurting me. It didn’t—how did you—?”

“I know now,” Phil said. “I’ve felt it all night, your heart calling me.” 

“Now?” Dan said, so softly Phil felt it more than heard it. 

“Dan, do you know I’ve always felt like I know your heart? Or like, you know. Metaphorically. Who you are. I’ve always just imagined it as your heart, I’m sure that’s silly to yo—” 

“Phil,” Dan cut him off. “It’s not. That’s how I always did too. I mean, I know it’s a bad metaphor but you know there’s limits on language for things that are that much of a mindfuck, you know, at first, and it was just as—”

“ _Dan_ ,” Phil said, fond and exasperated.

“Yeah. Okay. Right. Well, see, it was just easier,” Dan said. “To give it a shape. Because it made no sense, and I needed something that would.” 

“Exactly,” Phil said, then changed his mind. “Well, no actually I don’t know if that’s why I do. I just...do.” 

“You’re better at this than me,” Dan said, small but sure. “Not overthinking.” 

“What are you even on about you absolute pumpkin? You know I overthink things to death.” 

“But not everything,” Dan said. 

Phil swallowed. “Well...yeah. But that’s not my point. I just...” 

“Yeah?” 

“I thought we didn’t talk about it because it...just was...a thing?” God, it sounded so stupid when he said it out loud.

“We didn’t talk about it because it’s a _weird_ fucking thing, and I was scared you’d tell me I was crazy. That it wasn’t real.”

“Dan. You weren’t alone. If you’re crazy, I am.” 

Dan frowned and shook his head. “No. I know you feel it when it happens. I can see it. It’s not—I mean, you’ve never done it—” Phil felt his face fall and Dan was quick to push on, “No fuck wait, that’s not _bad_. I never minded. I mean, like the opposite. I love that I could...I didn’t understand what was happening but I also kind of didn’t want to because it felt really...special.” He said the last so quietly, as if it were something to be ashamed of, to love something you could do just for someone else, only for someone else.

“Dan. You...you see the scars on the outside. I see your heart. I can feel it, I know it so well. It’s so bright, when I close my eyes, it’s so clear. I always thought you knew.” 

“Phil, no offence, but what in the actual fuck?”

“I can see inside your heart,” Phil said, quick on an exhale, eyes squinted shut. He kind of didn’t want to see Dan’s reaction to that, not if he hadn’t known all along.

“C’mon, are you taking the piss right now?” Phil shook his head. Dan huffed. “Literally what would you want to see in—I can’t even imagine how—Phil, there’s some awful shit in there mate. ”

“No, no,” Phis said, urgency shaping the words, pressed into kisses against Dan’s cheeks and nose and chapped lips. “It’s brilliant. It’s so full; you overwhelm me with how much you feel.” 

“Ha,” Dan said. “That’s the damage I reckon.” 

“No,” Phil said, stern, pulling back to look Dan in the eyes. “It’s not. I don’t see that part. I know it’s there, but it’s like...like I know you from the inside, not the scars on the outside. You’ve _told_ me about all these ways you’ve been hurt, who has hurt you, how it hurts. And I can sense it, but it’s not like what you...do. I can’t believe we never talked about this, _fuck_ , I just assumed all this time.” 

“Phil,” Dan said. “I don’t understand— what do you—” 

“I don’t know. I wish I knew how to explain. You know me from the outside in. So to speak. I...know you from the inside out.” Phil paused, taking in Dan’s closed eyes, lashes long and clumped with moisture. His messy curls and the sagging neckline of a too-big comfort shirt. 

“Okay but on a practical level, what does that mean? Because, like, I know what it feels like for me. What it does. What good could yours…” 

“I’m not sure. You’re so beautiful Dan. It’s so beautiful, where I am. I always felt guilty, knowing you were taking the hurt. Every time you took a little of my pain—”

“—it’s lovely too. I know that sounds fucked up,” Dan interrupted. “But it’s _not_. Every time, it was like discovering something I already knew. And now, I know the shape of it, of you, so well. It doesn’t hurt.” 

“I know now,” Phil reminded him. “I wish I could have known sooner.” 

“Known what?” 

Phil took a breath, and put his hand on Dan’s chest. Kissed him slowly, reverently, inhaling Dan’s shaking exhales. The tiny, broken sound pulled from somewhere deep, the dark places Dan had tucked his pain away. Dan’s hands were fisted in the material of his shirt, at his back and his chest. Their legs were tangled. “I think maybe I knew your heart, and I knew your goodness, so that I could give that to you when you couldn’t see it. And maybe if we’d talked about it, we’d know for sure. But…” 

“All those times,” Dan said, broken and low, “that it felt like too much, when I didn’t feel like I deserved the good things, you loving me. When I felt so empty.” 

“I wasn’t taking the hurt away,” Phil said, and swallowed around a large and inconvenient lump in his throat. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t do that.” 

“You weren’t taking, no. You were giving me,” Dan said in wonder.

“I was showing you, is all.” Phil’s hand found Dan’s and squeezed, hard. A tear tracked from the corner of his eye and dripped off the edge of his nose. “I was just showing you what was already there.” 

Dan pulled his hand away and put it on Phil’s chest, then frowned. “Phil? Phil I-I can’t do it, why can’t I?”

“I told you. Something changed. Now I see you—I feel you—from the outside. Now I see the scars.” 

“Oh, no. _Nonono._ I don’t want you to feel those things,” Dan said, voice crackling around tears. 

“Are you sure it’s not that _you_ don’t want to?” Phil asked gently. 

“I don’t—I can’t.” Dan tucked his face under Phil’s chin. He was shaking. “There are things I don’t want either of us to know.” 

“But Dan, we do,” Phil said.

“What?” 

“I think it will take a long, long time to know you this way Dan,” Phil said gently. “But...it’s a bit like discovering an old memory, innit?”

“That’s how it’s always felt for me, yeah. Learning your pain, but like, I already knew it.” Dan puzzled over it. “Sometimes I was sure there’s nothing else to me, that that was why it was only me.”

“No,” Phil said softly. 

“What do we do now, then?” Dan said and Phil didn’t need any extraordinary skill to know how scared Dan was then, of sharing all of his scars. 

“I don’t know,” Phil said. He could have offered a handful of platitudes, empty words to try to soothe. But Phil had no more answers than Dan. Everything was new. _Too_ new. Like the brilliance left in the wake of lightning, a light so bright it left one temporarily stunned and blind.

“Dan, you’ve always trusted me, right?” 

“Yes,” Dan said without hesitation. 

“If I told you that I _know_ , in my bones, and always have, that you’re worth knowing, that there’s something so special about you...would you trust me, and maybe just hold on to that until you can know it too?” 

“You think I can?” 

“If you want. When you’re ready,” Phil said. 

Dan kissed Phil’s chest, over his heart, like he so often did. Kissed him gently and inhaled and closed his eyes. “Oh my god, Phil, holy mother _fuck_.” Dan said. “You’re so...is this what it’s been like for you? It’s so _much_.” 

Phil closes his eyes, fingers in Dan’s hair, feeling a feedback loop of love and joy connecting them in every place they touched. “Yes,” Phil said. 

Dan was quiet and unmoving for so long. Phil held as still as he could, because he could feel Dan’s aching. He was outside of the loveliest space he’d inhabited for so many years but for the first time, Dan was _inside_.

“You love me so much,” Dan said, lips still pressed to Phil’s chest, voice breaking.

“Yeah,” Phil said. What else was there to say—with words at least—when something so much bigger was speaking it for them. 

* * *

_and so, always_

“Should we have talked about this sooner, do you think?” Phil asked much, much later. He’d been on the edge of sleep, hovering in the warmth before the fall.

Dan cleared his throat, half asleep himself. “What d’you mean?” 

“Would it have helped? Could we have changed it?” 

Dan propped himself up on his elbow, looking down at Phil. His hair was a riot of curls, eyes slightly puffy from exhaustion and tears. He was so objectively beautiful, even when a mess, but still, and best of all, a man only truly knowable by Phil. One so completely Phil’s that the knowledge ached even as it burned so shatteringly bright. 

“I don’t want to know if we could have changed anything, honestly,” Dan said. “Because I’ve loved knowing you, getting to know you, being able to care for you, like this.” 

“But who was caring for you?” Phil said. He bit his lip. 

“Phil, you utter dingleberry, _you_ were, even without this weird— _thing_. What’s gotten into you?” 

“I just,” Phil started, then stopped. He traced Dan’s jaw, then his ear. Goosebumps shivered in the wake of his touch as it skirted Dan’s neck and clavicle. “I’ve been spoiled. Feeling how much love you have. I’ve been in on this secret and it’s been comforting and _mine_. But now I can see and feel all of your hurting. I mean, obviously I knew about it, but in a normal way, you know? This is totally different, it’s so tangible. And now I know it doesn’t hurt to take some of it from you. I wish I could have been doing that all along.” 

“Don’t cry, Phil,” Dan said, kissing Phil as softly as he could. It unnerved them both whe Phil cried like this. Generally they liked to joke that Dan did the crying for both of them. Phil leaned up suddenly, catching Dan off guard with a hard kiss. “ _Oh-_ ” Dan’s voice was quiet in its surprise when Phil rolled him over, draping himself on Dan with no care taken to prop himself up. He leaned the whole weight of his body on Dan’s. His knuckles ground against Dan’s where he held their hands together so tightly. 

“I wish I could take it all,” Phil said. He bit Dan’s neck, gently. Dan cried out and arched and shivered into Phil’s touch, against his weight. Phil buried his nose behind Dan’s ear and felt the way Dan’s body strained for more, loved the way his own body did too, leaning into the lovely haze where everything was Dan and he could be so, so lost to it.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Dan managed to say on a gasp. “I couldn’t do that for you.”

“You really wanted to?” Phil leaned up, then sat up to straddle him. He pulled Dan’s shirt off, rough and impatient. He removed his own in one swift motion, urgency lending him unusual grace. Dan let himself be undressed, let himself go pliant in Phil’s care. He didn’t speak; they didn’t speak. Instead he let Phil take him in hand, and then into his mouth, and then up and up and up slowly until he was crying without meaning to, begging without care, shameless in his desire, trusting that Phil would give him exactly what he needed when he did. 

Later, still shaking, coming down with Phil’s cock still hard and desperately grinding against Dan’s thigh, Dan spoke, too loud and too sudden, shocked. 

“It was never about if I wanted to. It wasn’t a choice. It is. Everything was how it was meant to be.” 

Phil’s hands grabbed at Dan’s back urgently, pulling Dan on to him. “So you’ll trust me then,” Phil said. Dan moved and got a hand between them, wide palm perfectly shaped for Phil’s body. Phil moaned out and bucked into the touch. 

“I’ll try,” Dan said. “I will.”

“You’ll trust when I say that you’re worth knowing? That there’s more to you than your pain? That you don’t have to know what anything means? That you don’t have to construct a purpose for it to be real?” 

“Phil,” Dan said, and squeezed Phil on the upstroke. Phil closed his eyes. He had no other words then, no language but Dan’s name.

Phil loved Dan without reservation, without boundaries, without fear and Dan knew that now. And he knew now that Phil had loved him like this from the start. 

Phil came with a gasp and a low moan and Dan kissed him quietly through it. Caught his gasps and the huff of laughter that so often followed an orgasm. 

Dan rolled them onto their sides, waiting patiently while Phil pulled himself back together. “I’ll trust you.” 

“Good.” Phil took Dan’s hand and pressed both palms against Dan’s heart. Dan exhaled and shook and broke down then, just a little, tears the release and for the first time Phil took just a bit of that pain. And it didn’t hurt, it didn’t hurt at all; Dan was right. It was tracing a scar to ask its story and realizing that story was already known, and that pain needn't be shouldered alone. 

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks to [calvinahobbes](https://calvinahobbes.tumblr.com/) for encouraging me every step of this odd way and for the supportive and super helpful beta work!
> 
> If you somehow liked this, please consider visiting me or reblogging on[tumblr](https://judearaya.tumblr.com/post/616118383130427392)!


End file.
